UFOs

Laboratory and the private Cruzeiro do Sul Aerophotogrammetric Service, both confirming their authenticity. Later, civilian experts in America conducted further analysis.[134]

It was only recently, in 2008 and 2009, that the Brazilian government began its release of numerous previously secret UFO files and stated that it would gradually release them all in groups by decade, one decade at a time. As of this writing, documents, photos, and drawings from the 1950s through the 1980s have been made public—more than 4,000 pages—many of them concerning the Air Force’s “Operation Saucer,”[135] involving extensive military investigations of UFOs in the Amazon region in 1977.

A. J. Gevaerd, coordinator of the Brazilian Committee of UFO Researchers, a prominent civilian group, and his colleagues have been instrumental in bringing about the release of these government files. Gevaerd was also the first to interview four-star Brigadier General Jose Carlos Pereira (Ret.), the highest-ranked Brazilian official ever to speak out about UFOs. Brigadier General Pereira has contributed an original piece on the handling of UFO events in Brazil at the highest levels, including his personal thoughts about the phenomenon, for this book. At his request, some of the material included in his piece was excerpted from a transcribed interview with Gevaerd, while some of it was written specifically for this piece. All was translated from Portuguese.[136]

The general begins his essay with a description of a spectacular series of sightings involving military pilots and radar on May 19, 1986, which has come to be known as “official UFO night in Brazil.” It was not until late in 2009—after Brigadier General Pereira completed his piece “UFOs in Brazil”—that any documentation was made public about this case. The newly released five-page “Occurrence Report” about the 1986 incident was written by the acting commander of the Brazilian air defense command to provide the Minister of Aeronautics with “information provided by the air traffic control and air defense, as well as the interceptor pilots involved in this event.” The once-classified report states that radar readings on both the air defense system and intercepting jets were recorded simultaneously, while, also simultaneously, the pilots observed the objects through the cockpit window. Such an “achievement” is quite rare: to capture a UFO on ground radar and airborne radar while pilots observe it, all at the same time. This is what the Belgian Air Force hoped to accomplish through its launch of F-16s a few years later, as described by General De Brouwer.

The document lists numerous common characteristics of the phenomena recorded that night, such as sudden accelerations and decelerations, an ability to hover, and supersonic speeds. The objects were observed as white, green, and yellow lights, and sometimes without any lights at all. The official conclusion reads as follows: “It is the opinion of this Command that the phenomenon is solid and reflects intelligence by its capacity to follow and sustain distance from the observers, and also to fly in formation, not necessarily manned.”[137]

Brigadier Jose Carlos Pereira was a commander of the Brazilian Airspace Defense Command[138] from 1999 to 2001, and he then became General Commander of Air Force Operations until 2005. In that position, he supervised thirteen generals and 27,000 subordinates. Prior to these positions, he had been a commander of several air bases in Brazil and commander of the Brazilian Air Force Academy.

On the night of May 19, 1986, an array of UFOs were spotted over southeastern Brazil, and the entire defense system was put on alert. The Air Force scrambled its most experienced pilots in F-5 and F-103 jets to intercept these objects. Colonel Ozires Silva, president of a Brazilian oil company, and his pilot, Commander Alcir Pereira de Silva, were flying an executive Xingu jet near Pocos de Caldas heading to Sao Jose dos Campos, when radars in different locations showed twenty-one UFOs in the sky from Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro. Silva and his pilot saw one of them and chased it for thirty minutes—a fast-moving, bright red-orange light that appeared to jump from point to point. They were not able to gain on it and eventually had to give up their pursuit.

This was a situation in which numerous expert witnesses saw something and radar detected the same thing. Radar equipment can be affected by many different factors, and can present a false echo, but a false target appears very briefly and is easy to recognize because it disappears quickly. It’s a different story when we have a regular trajectory to follow. Also, when we have more than one radar spotting the same target, we know it’s serious. This equipment operates in different frequencies, so we have the correlation of independent readings from different sources. These data have nothing to do with human eyes. When, along with the radar, a pilot’s pair of eyes sees that same thing, and then another pilot’s, and so on, the incident has real credibility and stands on a solid foundation.

A few days after these sightings, Brazil’s Minister of Aeronautics, Brigadier Octavio Moreira Lima, called a press conference to explain what happened. He revealed that six jets had been scrambled from Santa Cruz AFB and Anapolis AFB, and some of the pilots had made visual contact, while all objects were registered on radar. The minister promised an official report within the next thirty days, but for some reason he changed his mind about releasing it. This was probably for some political reason, or maybe fear of panic because at that time the thinking was that the population might panic, if they knew. But in the meantime, the pilots and controllers were not prohibited from speaking about it.

The events of that night were really amazing, and some of our simple questions have simple answers: Did the pilots see the phenomena? Yes. Did the radars spot them? Yes. Did Ozires and other military pilots see them? Yes. Did pilots in commercial aircraft see them? Yes. Do the times of the sightings correlate? Yes. Do the trajectories of the objects correlate? Yes; all of this was technically analyzed. So, did it happen?

Yes, it did happen.

Everything was spotted by both aircraft radars and the radars on the ground. On- board radars operate in a microwave band, which is very narrow, while ground radars operate in a much broader band, so there’s no risk of confusion or mistaken correlation.

During this event, the military was not fearful of any sort of invasion. Jets armed with missiles took off and reached the objects in less than two minutes. These jets are always armed, but with peacetime armaments, consisting of two small missiles. If those objects were from an enemy country, they’d have been crushed that night. These pilots were highly trained and their radar capacities were increased to the maximum, which normally isn’t required. Radars never operate at full capacity, in order to save energy and to prevent wear-and-tear on the equipment. But after the jets took off, the capacity was increased to a broader range. Communications never failed, and the country was suffering no threat whatsoever. The jets landed safely and the pilots returned unharmed. Mission accomplished!

I don’t think that UFOs have made any real threat to national security, but we have to recognize that the current lack of knowledge about the subject is enough to raise suspicions, as it would about anything as seemingly advanced. So we then come to the very biggest of questions: What were those objects? No one knows. They were not foreign jets attacking. They were unidentified flying objects. And where are these objects now? Who knows? Were they captured? Not that we know. So here is where the problem of material evidence comes in, and we don’t have it.

When I was a commander, these unusual sightings occurred about once a month and usually were of very short duration. I remember there were about two to three incidents per year of military pilots being sent up to intercept something unknown that appeared on radar. Our civilian pilots are not afraid to speak up, and they always do, because they don’t want to lose their jobs for not reporting unusual events. The first thing they do when they see something strange is to call the controllers, because they have a huge personal responsibility.

A civilian aircraft is always in contact with air traffic control, and all of these operations in Brazil are linked to the Air Force and are of a military nature. When a commercial pilot says, “There’s something going on here,” the control center will immediately report it to the military operations center in that area, in case it is something serious. They will take some action regarding that fact and report to the air defense operations center,[139] which is the superior body and the only one to oversee the whole country. Then the pilot or the air traffic controller will fill out a report; they know where to get the form—from any Air Force base or any traffic controlling office throughout the country—and they deliver the completed papers to any Air Force base.

Next, there’s always an investigation after the pilot registers what he saw. As requested on the reporting